The view has changed little since Hawthorne's time, but my vision of Stonehenge today is very different. Artists, mystics, and scientists have contemplated the stones for centuries, calling them everything from a place to summon demons to the world's first computer. Hawthorne didn't find any answers here. It is, he wrote, "a mystery as to who built it, and how, and for what purpose." But now, as modern archaeology reaches beyond the stones, we are finding a ceremonial landscape as unique as the megaliths within it:

The remnants of mid-winter feasts at the nearby town of Durrington Walls show that the winter solstice may have been the important time for celebrations at Stonehenge.

Chemical analysis of bones from burials near Stonehenge reveal that people were immigrating to the area from the European continent.

New carbon-14 dates indicate that Stonehenge is 1,000 years older than archaeologists previously believed.

A wooden henge at Durrington Walls that has lead to the contorversial new idea that wood henges were associated with rituals for the living while Stonehenge was associated with rituals for the dead.

Getting back to near the time of the same people who built the Sphinx, eh?

Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.

Belfast Telegraph 16 July 2004
Archaeologists are finally in agreement that the Megalithic period in Ireland 'boomed' between the years 4200BC and 3500BC.
The date controversy over the Irish Megalithic period - most significantly characterised by the Carrowmore site in Sligo - was put to rest at an archaeology conference in Sligo.
The findings of the conference have just been released even though it took place two years ago.
The Carrowmore site has one of the largest concentrations of Megalithic tombs in Western Europe.
It pre-dates the Newgrange and Boyne complex and is older than the Egyptian pyramids.
Swedish Professor Goran Burenhult, who excavated the Carrowmore grave complex for more than 20 years, said that the conference papers gave the most complete picture available on the Megalithic period in Ireland and Western Europe.
During the Megalithic era, most of the giant stone monuments were built.
In the past, it was thought that the pyramid tombs of Egypt and the Middle East were earlier than the Megalithic tombs of Ireland.
However, excavations showed that Carrowmore was both earlier than the Newgrange and Boyne complex and the Egyptian pyramids.
"The early dates revealed by Carrowmore have been controversial," said Professor Burenhult. "But we now have agreement that 4200BC is the start of the Megalithic tradition in Ireland. So we have a chronology now."
The results of the conference, which was held in Sligo two years ago, have just been presented to the Institute of Technology, Sligo.
The Stones and Bones conference was a prelude to the establishment of the BSc in Applied Archaeology course. Professor Burenhult went to Sligo to make the presentation.
He wanted to discuss future links between IT Sligo's Applied Archaeology course and the archaeology course in the University of Gotland, where he is professor.
"There is much more to do at Carrowmore, many more questions to be answered. We have got very firm outline dates and now we can ask questions about the living society behind the tombs."

Goodness, KB, I've just managed to join up my two brain cells and realised that my daughter, Lucy, and her family were actually on holiday in that area of France last year, and were so fascinated by the standing stones that they saw, they could talk of little else when they got back. Even my three-year-old granddaughter, Kaya, was impressed.

So here are some of their photos of them:

Kaya's not looking so impressed in this one. I think she's wondering how soon she can reasonably ask when are they going to the ice cream shop?

Thanks for posting those, Ishtar. It seems obvious to me, looking at the third and last photo, that the Henge buiders and the Megalithic Culture in France are the same people. That stone would fit right in at Stonehenge.

Looks like she would have enjoyed any that accidentally made it into her mouth!

Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.

Practically nothing is known of the social organization or religious beliefs of the people who erected the menhirs. We have no trace even of these peoples' language, however we do know that they buried their dead, and had the skills to grow cereal, farm, and make pottery, stone tools, and jewelry. Speculation as to their use remains speculation, however it is likely that many had a functionality involving fertility rites and seasonal cycles. Until recently, menhirs were associated with the Beaker people, who inhabited Europe during the later third millennium BC; the European late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. However, recent research into the age of megaliths in Brittany strongly suggests a far older origin, perhaps back to six to seven thousand years ago.[2]

Thanks, that prompted me to Google menhir and this is what Wiki has to say. I wish someone would tell us what the "recent research" is that is dating some of them to 7,000 yrs. old.

Digit wrote:Megaliths seem always to be seen as European, in fact they seem almost world wide. Whether they arose independently of each other or not poses an interesting question.

I know about them being European. You can find them from France to the Caucasus. Of course the 'materials' for constructing them, huge boulders, originally were carried there from the north by the land ice of the last ice age. So they are actually end moraines, marking the southernmost extent of the ice cap.

But why do you say "they seem almost world wide", Dig? Offhand I can't think of any 'henge type' structures, or 'dolmen', or 'hunbeds' in central or east Asia, or north America.